New Line Commissions ‘Y: The Last Man’ Script from ‘Warehouse 13′ Writers

What a nice bit of timing for Brian K. Vaughan. No sooner than his much anticipated return to monthly comics, Saga, debuts than news breaks that the film version of his most beloved work, Y: The Last Man, is progressing apace. The Hollywood Reporter brings word that Matthew Federman and Stephen Scaia are set to adapt Vaughan and artist Pia Guerra's hit sci-fi series about the last man on Earth for New Line Cinema. Although the Vertigo project has been in development for years, THR reports that the new script is starting from scratch.Created by Vaughan and Guerra and available from Vertigo in paperback and hardcover collections, Y: The Last Man stars an amateur young escape artist called Yorrick and his pet monkey, Ampersand, last living male mammals on Earth. A mysterious plague caused every other living thing with a Y chromosome to drop dead simultaneously, ending society (not to mention the human race) as we know it. Unable to account for his and Ampersand's survival and terrified of being discovered, Yorrick and his pet leave their home in New York on a quest for Beth, Yorrick's beloved girlfriend who was all the way in Australia when civilization ended. Yorrick's existence is exposed along the way, as is the truth behind the apocalyptic plague.

Y: The Last Man has been in development as a motion picture since at least 2007, when Disturbia director D.J. Caruso was attached to a script by Carl Ellsworth that was later rewritten by Vaughan himself. Supposedly that project was to star Transformers and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull's Shia LaBeouf in the lead role.

The new script New Line has commissioned from Federman and Scaia is unrelated to any other. ComicsAlliance readers may know this duo's work from such television series as Charlie's Angels, Human Target, Warehouse 13 and Jericho, and THR's report indicates they penned a forthcoming Zorro reboot.